Alikhanizadeh

Here is the PC at home with the complete finished setup. I've added an Anker four port USB hub (left of monitor) and a three socket desktop mains power strip (left rear corner of desk). The USB hub is stuck down with velcro and the power strip is clamped solidly on to the desktop. These two things give me convenient connectivity and power that rise and fall with the desk. At the far left on the bookshelf you can see my audio interface/DAC that is hooked up to the speakers and PC. I also sanded the edges of the desk to a better finish, rounded the edges and protected it all with Danish oil. Here the desk is in the standing position. There is a fair bit of weight on the desk now so It's nice knowing there are three good quality actuators under there. I'm 6"2' so I have the desk quite high, I imagine it'd be a bit wobbly if it just had the two legs. From the back you can see the cable management. I used two Ikea Signum cable trays to hold everything under the desk. I put a power strip in each of the cable trays which meant I only had to have one power cable run to the floor. Despite this I still had to use a fair few extra long and a few custom cables to connect everything else up. Everything is tied up with velcro wraps and I tried to use all black cables to keep it looking tidy. I used a big zip up cable sleeve for the cables that run to the floor so nothing gets caught when the desk is moving.

Some detail shots of the interior. Coolant is EK Cryofuel clear premix You can see how tight the fit between the PSU, fan, HDD and radiator is in this shot. You can also see how the cables all part to allow airflow from the bottom fan. The colour of the sleeving is MDPC-X Shade-19

Finally, I can say it's finished. Brace yourself for the avalanche of photos...

Thanks!

The big cables are now done but I've still got more wiring to do. Some of what remained on the wiring to do list; ● Shorten and sleeve the wiring for the rear exhaust fan and floor intake fan ● Make and sleeve a loom/splitter for the front two 140mm radiator intake fans ● Make a fan hub and modify wiring for the top three 120mm radiator exhaust fans. ● Make a cable for the case power LED ● Sleeve the case power switch wire ● Shorten and sleeve the coolant pump power and PWM wires, I'm also converting the power connector from Molex to SATA ● Make a SATA power distribution cable for the HDD, case power LED and coolant pump I started with the pump. I cut down, sleeved terminated the PWM control wires. Here they are mid way through the process. I did the same for the power wires. The connector here was originally Molex, since everything else in the system was SATA when I re-terminated the wires I wanted to use a SATA connector. It was then that I discovered how hard it is to find and buy male SATA connectors. Most are moulded on to the wire which is not much good to me. I eventually found some. They are push fit, there is still the finisher cap to go on in the photo below. Next, I made a SATA power distribution cable Here you can see where it fits in the bottom of the case. The connector with the two wires passing out the shot vertically is for the coolant pump. The unpopulated plug will be for the case power LED. Starting to look a bit more tidy. After this I did the fan wiring but I didn't photograph a lot of what I did so I can't show you. One thing I did photograph was the "loom" for the front two intake fans. It was actually quite frustrating to make, I sleeved 4 separate wires together in one sleeve and then soldered a split to 8 wires which go to the fans Next I made a new case power LED cable. The old one was way too short, the SATA end was moulded on to the wire and I couldn't remove the pins from the other end so I had no way to lengthen it other than bodging wires together. I used another "push fit" male SATA connector of the same type used previously and managed to figure out what type of terminal Phanteks used for their power/led PCB (for reference it's JST PH series with a 2mm pitch). Once I got some JST PH terminals, connectors and a crimp tool I could make a new cable. Old on the top, new on the bottom. The last cable to tidy was the SATA data cable to HDD. Rather than try and sleeve them I thought I'd go the most unobtrusive off the shelf cable, tried a few and went for this in the end. After this I spent quite a bit of time tidying up lose ends and finishing off the build, lot's of small jobs that I didn't photograph individually. I'll save the rest of the waffle for the final reveal. ?

Seems to work. I lost my notes with all of the temperatures I recorded over the build so I can't say what the difference was but it did make a difference. The front and top panel on this case are pretty restrictive, even after the tweaks, which I think exacerbates the problem. All three intake fans are totally sealed off now so they can only pull in ambient air.

A few things I've done between cables. Swapped the rear 140mm fan to another BeQuiet Silent Wings 3, they're great fans for free air, and it matches the fan on the bottom of the case. I also swapped the front two 140mm fans to the new EK Vardars. The idea being that they're better for static pressure and have a wider range of RPM (both slower for sound and faster for shifting heat) than the stock Phanteks fans. Not sure I like the sound of the Vardars though so I think they're going to get changed when Noctua eventually release their new newfangled A-series in 140mm. I've started blocking off any openings that would allow heated air from within the case to pass back into the ambient intake air causing circular air movement. I'm using satin black 3M 1080 automotive wrap film. I've double sided it all so there is no exposed adhesive to collect dust. It's pretty easy to work with, I've used in a quite a few areas of the case to block airflow and to cover up a few holes and parts of the case that were a bit of an eyesore. During testing my 1TB 850 EVO SSD crapped out. No idea why (ESD maybe?) but it's well and truly bricked. Luckily, nearly everything was backed up but that left me needing a new primary drive. I decided to get a 960 PRO NVMe M.2 drive. This drive gives me space and reliability coupled with the speed of an SSD RAID (with out the drawbacks of a RAID). I was already struggling for space on my old 1TB so it had to be the 2TB. Since write endurance and speed generally increase with size when it comes to SSDs, this is the fastest version of the worlds fastest consumer drive at the time I bought it, plus it's the highest rated out of the range for endurance. The 2TB is eye poppingly expensive but I've learnt time and time again in the past to buy a bit more storage than you need, otherwise you very quickly end up with a myriad of mediocre, medium sized drives. There are two M.2 slots on the Asus X299 Deluxe board, one requires an extra bracket and sticks up off the board, one is under the PCH heat sink. I went for the latter. I removed the Asus provided thermal pad and fitted it with a much larger piece of Thermal Grizzly Minus Pad 8. Never goes above 50c even under synthetic loads despite sharing the heatsink with the PCH.

The last( and longest) of the big cables is for the 8 + 4 pin EPS motherboard socket. Voila. Something I forgot to mention in my previous post is that all of the cable combs in this build are aluminium, not plastic. I tried a few plastic ones but kept breaking them, especially on the 24 pin. These are "Eiskamm" combs by Alphacool. I'd definitely recommend them, the only thing to be aware of is that they will scratch your case/components if you're a bit ham fisted when fitting your cables, they're much harder than the plastic combs. I triple check the pin-outs on each cable by eye and use this PSU tester for a final check of the voltages before fitting. Tight near the top radiator but it's all good.

Here is the finished 24 pin. You can see how having each wire the correct length allows the cable to follow a fairly complex curve.

Okay, the 24 pin. I'll go through the steps this time. Here is the rough process; First, I cut the required number wires and sleeving to length (leaving them about 1/3 longer than what I expect to use). Then I strip all of the wires at one end, prepare the terminals and crimp one terminal on one end of each wire. Next I slide the sleeving on. On the end of the wire I just crimped I then melt the sleeving on to the wire and terminal. I did this using a pencil blow torch and heatshrink, the heatshrink helps to evenly melt the sleeving without burning it, it also compresses it on to the wire and creates a nice round tidy melt. The heatshrink does burn but it's sacrificial and I tear it off before everything cools. The positioning of the sleeving is critical, a few mm too far down toward the terminal and it will be impossible to insert in to the connector, a few mm too far back and the melted sleeve will be visible and might not grip the wire properly. I then stretch the sleeving tight and melt the other (non crimped) end of wire and sleeving together making a "blank" end. This is just to keep the sleeving tight for the next stage. I can now insert the crimped ends of the wires in to the component side connector and thread on a few cable combs. I then plug this one ended cable in to the component it will be used with and route it through the case, putting in curves and bends where needed until I reach the location of the socket on the PSU. At this point I have lots of excess wire on the PSU end, I cut all of the wires at the point they would need to terminate in to the PSU connector. Because this is done in situ each wire is exactly the right length when taking in to account the bends. If I made the cable flat on the bench with each wire being the same length it would kink and buckle when curved. Next I remove the cable from the case, cut back a few mm of sleeving and repeat most of the strip/crimp/melt process for the other end. The final process is to make all of the splits and splices for the wires that need to bifurcate. To do this I remove some sleeving and insulation from the parent wire, strip some insulation from the end of the child wire and crimp them together using the rear half of a round Molex terminal (remembering to slip heatshink over the wire before crimping). I shamelessly stole the crimping trick from Australian wiring maestro Singularity Computing. The splices are then soldered. Belt and braces. The splices are finished with heat shrink and glue. Cable combs are fitted and then all of the terminals are inserted in to the connectors. I picked up this method from a number of sources but it is mostly based from this Hans Pedler Sahl video. Cheers Hans.

You madman! This must be the first PC build ever to reference "24k gold" and "sandstone techniques" in the same paragraph.

Forgot to say thanks! Much appreciated.

Time for wiring. Here is most of what I'll be using. Mostly from MDPX in Germany and Pexon PCs in the UK. I had to source quite a few specific uncommon parts from eBay and some obscure online retailers. I've never done custom wiring in a PC before so I've also bought the MDPC CTX3 crimp tool and pin tools as well as some decent wire strippers. My order from MDPC-x came with a little drawing on the back of my invoice courtesy of Nils (the CEO) and my MOLEX pin tool was also a "Custom edition" with my name on it. How cool is that! I've ordered a lot of stuff in my life and there are occasionally some nice touches thrown in but I've never seen anything like this. Amazing. First, a few before shots. The previous post has photos of the motherboard side, here is the other side as it stands. The basement spaghetti. ATX 24 pin (this was before dimming the LEDs) Double PCIe 6+2pin I started with the wiring for the graphics card. Didn't take too many photos of this first job (got too engrossed in the process). There will be more photos of other cables with a description of the process later. Here it is in the works. Here is the PSU end part way though crimping terminals and melting sleeving. You can see that the individual wires are far from the same length, I explain why further down. Many, many hours and a few spliced wires later, here is the finished product. Here is where it fits from above... ...and from below. Next up, the big 24 pin cable for the motherboard.

Thanks for the update, your build was inspiration before I built my PC. It's beautiful!

There are many more tweaks still to do (and many more already done that I haven't mentioned) and lots of custom wiring still to be done, but here it is after the first proper build up. You can see how far the modified front panel stands off, I think this is about as far as you can go before it starts to look shoddy. Lots of messy wiring but that will be sorted soon enough. A few things are still temporary in these photos but you can see how it's coming together.

I didn't like how bright the LEDs in the Corsair Dominator Platinum DIMMs were and there is no option to dim them. I found that if you remove the aluminium bar on the top you can access the side of the LED that emits the light. I cut some adhesive 65% tinted sheet it to tiny squares and laid them on top of the LED. Like so. Worked well, much more subtle light. DIMMS dimmed... I also didn't like how bright some of the system LEDs were so they got the same treatment. You can barely tell the film is there.

Nice! Reminds me of mine a bit, bar the two 2080tis. Nearly went with a Fractal too. Great cases. Do you recon you could squeeze another Rad in the top? How have you found the ML fans?

Ouch. Thanks for the warning, I'll keep an eye on it. It's on my desk so It's not hard for me to check. On to the build. I was getting much closer with CPU/GPU temperatures but was now struggling with negative air pressure in the case and slightly higher than ideal PCH/RAM/motherboard temperatures. Long story short, the best fan configuration for the cooling loop means the only intake fans are those on the front radiator. This leaves me with insufficient cool airflow over passively cooled components in the case. The fact that I have lot of negative air pressure that I want to resolve means that it makes sense for me to find a way to add an extra fan to pull ambient unheated air in to the case. The standard rear fan position worked best as an exhaust in tests, so that's out (it just made a loop of hot air when used as an intake, it also opposed the general front to back, bottom to top airflow direction in the case). I tried all sorts of things without much success. Here I'm testing two 60mm Noctuas below the radiator (didn't work, the front panel is too restrictive so they just fought the 140mm fans for air). The catalyst for a solution came from my PSU surprisingly enough. The Corsair HX1000 I bought for this project has a horrible coil whine so I intended changing it. I realised if I got a shorter PSU with connectors that terminated at the top I may be able to squeeze an intake fan in the floor of the case. The case feet raise the floor of the case enough to allow air in and the "basement" divider is liberally perforated to allow air in to the upper portion of the case so it should work. The Corsair AX860 turned out to be the perfect replacement. Side by side you can see the difference in length and connector layout. The AX860 has no coil whine, was more efficient and as a bonus has no capacitors on the cable and fewer double wires. AX860 24 pin on the right, HX1000 on the left, looks like there are some capacitors in that bulge. I'm doing full custom cables from scratch later so that will be helpful. Here is the floor of the case marked up before cutting and drilling. Fitted up a spare fan with some temporary fasteners to test it. It actually worked really well, dropped the temperature of the passively cooled components, created neutral to positive air pressure and even dropped the temperatures in the cooling loop as it feeds some ambient air to the top radiator. I painted the bare metal and substituted the Phanteks fan for a BeQuiet Silent Wings 3. I tried a few different filters and eventually settled on this Akasa filter. Fitted up. Here is the view from inside with the temporary cable spaghetti. You can see the fan between the PSU and HDD. That leads me on to the HDD I'm using. I decided from the start that I only wanted one internal HDD. With the decreasing cost, high speed and small form factor of SSDs, I see little need for a HDD other than for bulk storage for archived projects. This single drive will act as my local bulk storage and I will have a multidrive NAS in another room connected over gigabit ethernet as my main bulk storage. Main priorities are reliability and silence for this drive. After much deliberation I went for the 10TB version of the Western Digital Red. These large capacity WD drives are essentially new versions of the famously reliable HGST hermetically sealed helium filled drives. I would normally go for the WD Gold drives but these are actually pretty noisy, as are Red Pros. The standard Red 10TB seems to be the sweet spot of the range when taking noise in to consideration. It's the quietest performance WD drive, still has the massive 256MB cache, it's still helium filled, still has an exceptional MTBF and is only fractionally slower than the most expensive gold drive. Unlike the Gold, Red Pro, Black ect, this drive is 5200rpm which is largely responsible for the reduction in sound. Despite this is actually out paces my WD Black 6TB and destroys my Black 4TB in benchmarks. I find HDD noises are greatly amplified by the PC case so I always prefer to mount mechanical drives with a suspension mount. I'll be using a Sharkoon suspension mount that I used in my old build. Holds the drive pretty solidly whilst still isolating it completely. It's totally inaudible even when reading and writing with the PC just a couple of feet away from me on the desk.

Very nice. I do fancy giving a HTPC/TV gaming setup in this form factor a go one day. What do you use it for aside from gaming?

Next were some more fairly straightforward modifications to the case to improve airflow. Air exiting the top of the case after passing through the top radiator has to pass through these two mouldings. I ground the fins back to make a larger area for air to exit. Extending the front panel is pretty much a must do modification for anyone with an Enthoo EVOLV case. It sits too close to the front fan intake and chokes it There are many different ways to do it but I used long cap head 6-32 UNC screws with a washer and a nylon spacer to create the stand off. You might have also spotted that I have removed the light conduit for the front LED. It restricts airflow and I didn't want it anyway. Less is more! The temps are getting closer to where I need them to be now but there is still more to do.

I decided to swap the EK paste and pads for Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut and Thermal Grizzly Minus pad 8s. I kept applying and re-applying the Kryonaut as I kept getting bits in, after a while I noticed the bits were actually IN the syringe, The whole syringe was full of crap mixed in the with paste, a bit rubbish for what is supposed to be the best paste out there. Must have been a dodgy batch. Here is the final application (spread, as per Kryonaught instructions), I managed to pluck most of the junk out. Despite the contamination it did drop the temps a very small amount (which is impressive considering EK paste is actually really good). The Thermal Grizzly Minus 8 pad dropped the VRM temps a lot.

Now, I flushed all of the pipe fittings and cooling components, filled the system up, bled it, set up Windows and ran some benchmarks and thermal tests. I had some further thermal mods in mind but I want the run some tests before I went any further. Most temps were fine but core temps were little hotter than I preferred so I on with the mods. First, I pulled the cooling loop apart. I wanted to try I re-seating the monoblock with a different thermal compound and I also noticed there appeared to be some yellow grease leaching out of the monoblock O-ring and there were a few bits trapped in the cooling channels. Spread looks okay? EK thermal pad on the VRMs had leached quite a bit of oil. You can see the goop and bits in the block. Stripped, cleaned and reassembled

Time for the plumbing. Here are the beginnings of the routing for the loop (the green stuff is rubber coated garden wire). Flow direction is clockwise. Although in reality loop order makes an almost immeasurably small difference due to flow rates I still wanted to keep a logical order to the loop. That is, top rad (takes air from inside the case) --> front rad (takes air from outside the case) --> pump --> CPU/VRM monoblock --> GPU block. The 7900x OCd is easily going to the hardest component to cool in the loop so I wanted to give it every chance by being the first in line after the rads. Every degree helps with this i9. I'm using PETG tubing and EK HDC compression fittings in black nickel. I chose some complicated angles for my runs and found bending tubes freehand pretty difficult (see the bowl full of scrapped tubes) but I got there in the end. Here is the final line up of fittings and tubes that I will use.

After much mocking up, measuring and testing the layout was concrete enough that I could get the panels ready for paint. You can now see how they fit and where the pump will fit. You can see I used long bolts and nylon spacers to stand the pump bracket off from the panel. This is important for routing the cooling loop as you will see later. Here is the other panel on the back of the case. Excuse the fingerprints. You can see the panels still allow use of the original cable pass through grommets. I also needed to make a panel to blank off this opening in to the basement. Here is what I came up with and here it is fitted.

I have actually made a lot of progress since the last post but just haven't had time to post any updates. Such is life. Anyway, next up: more butchering of the case. I'm using a 280mm radiator in the front so I will be using two 140mm fans. As you can see the case is a bit restrictive for this size of fan. Chop, chop, chop Much better I really don't like this area of the case in the photograph below with loads of holes for HDD shelves in it. 1. It's useless as HHDs are so huge and cheap you only really need one or two and SSDs are rapidly expanding in capacity and dropping in price. 2. It's useless as I have other plans for locating my HDD 3. It's useless as I will have my coolant pump/reservoir, radiator and plumbing in the way so I couldn't fit drives there anyway. 4. I want to mount my pump/reservoir here and the number of existing holes makes it a bit tricky. 5. It looks ugly My plan was to make two "blanking plates" to fit either side of this area to solve the above problems. I had to cut off and drill out any parts that stood proud of the surrounding area. Here is the end result of the hacking. The rough looking paint is just to protect exposed metal, it's all going to get covered up. Here are the blanking plates before paint. You'll see how they fit soon.